House Keeping for DAWs


Are you the type to have only the portion of the bed you'll be lying on arranged while the rest in chaos? Can one find used plates under your bed or squeezed paper from unsuccessful basket throws around your dustbin? Then hear this, if you're a producer or mix engineer and your DAW projects look anything like your room, you've still not escaped mama's shouting.

House keeping in audio production is very important. As a matter of fact, a novice can sometimes masquerade as an experienced professional if he keeps his project's resources and tools well arranged.

Here are some simple and practical tips to help you organize your digital audio work space.

1. Name Your Tracks
I know sometimes you're brimming with so many ideas begging for musical expression but in your spare time, rename those instruments, sequencer tracks and mixer channels. Name effects and automaton tracks if possible. Tag all 'tagables' with text and even color for better visual direction.

Tracks can be named by:

Instrument type
E.g. Kick or BD (bass drums), Snare/SN, Clap/Cl, Hi-hat/HH, Crash/Cr, Cymbals/Cym, bass, sub bass, electric bass, lead guitar, distorted guitar and so on.

Performance type
E.g. String tremolo, Synth arp (arpeggio), Horns staccato/stab, piano chords, guitar solo and so on.

Function in song
E.g. Lead vocal, back up vox, add libs e.t.c.

Effect type
E.g. Multiband compressor, envelope generator, stereo delay, plate reverb, flanger etc.

VST Name
This is not advisable as some VST names relay little or no information about the instrument or device used e.g Pentagon, Nexus, Purity, Fabfilter and so on.

2. Sequencing and Routing
For best results, each instrument (recorded audio and VST) should have it's own sequencer track and mixer channel.

I see this error with FL users a lot, putting different instrument patterns on one sequencer lane; messing things up when instrument stems are required for export.

Each instrument should be assigned it's own mixer channel too. This might increase the amount of tracks per project but folder tracks, busses and group channels are some ways to consolidate many into few.

3. Arrangement & Order
It means keeping tracks/channels usually mixed together...together. For example, drums and percussion's are usually mixed together, so make sure your kick isn't way up while your snare is way down; they should be side by side.

Same goes with vocals, your tenor back up should be next to your alto and other harmonies. This arrangement will vary amongs't users but it improves navigation speed and workflow.


Tips for Exporting Beat Stems for Mixing

- Write out the Tempo of the project somewhere, or add it to the name of the export folder e.g Kukere Beat_90bpm.

- Ensure every instrument has its own sequencer track and mixer channel.

- Soloing tracks to export one after the other is outdated, most modern DAWs have features for automated export of all selected tracks. Explore this feature in your DAW.

- When exporting tracks with send effects, you might need to solo it first before selecting it and the send effects channels in the export page. This will export the track of interest and it's send channels, that way the engineer can mix those effects (e.g delay or reverb) to his taste or just remove them entirely and have a dry sound.

- The soloing of tracks with send effects before export is to ensure that other sounds that share those same send effects  aren't captured in the sends audio file.

- Automation will affect the final output of exported audio; if you don't want this, disable the automation of the track.

- Groups, busses, fx's and the master channel will be exported too, un-tick any of these in the export/bounce window if you don't want them exported.

- Use your DAWs start and end markers to select the region on the sequencer to export.

-24-bits and 44.1Khz is a standard format for exporting audio.


Final Note

 It's easier to find things in an arranged and we'll cataloged environment than in a chaotic one, if you doubt me ask Google.

In all, to be tidy in everything you do is a habit worth cultivating.


Written by,
Chidi (Tite) Nnadi.

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